MOSCOW, June 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the federal law ratifying the Russian-Chinese additional agreement on the eastern border section, the Kremlin press service said.
The two chambers of the Russian parliament, the State Duma and the Federation Council, ratified the agreement on May 20 and May 25, respectively.
The additional agreement was signed during President Putin's visit to Beijing on October 14, 2004. It delimitates the eastern border in the two sections, near the Bolshoi island in the upper reaches of the Argun river (the Chita region) and near the islands Tarabarov and Bolshoi Ussiriiski at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers (near the city of Khabarovsk).
The total area of the two sections (about 375 square kilometers) is divided into halves.
President's special envoy for border talks with China Vitaly Vorobyov said earlier that Russia made neither juridical concessions, nor transfers of any part of its land under the additional agreement.
According to Vorobyov, the Russian-Chinese border delimitation in the Far East was formalized in the 1860 treaty. Its specifics are that the Amur and Ussuri water area was not delimitated and the two border edges laid along the banks. "In other words, the islands remained neither Russian, nor Chinese," Vorobyov said.
The 1991 agreement basically cleared up this ambiguity. It fixed the Russian-Chinese river border in compliance with the median fairway principle. Ownership of the islands' was fixed correspondingly. Thus, the islands were for the first time jointly distributed, with the exception of two regions.
The additional agreement makes things entirely clear. In order to observe the main principles of delimitation on the navigable rivers, the borderline on the two remaining sections had to be drawn up not only on the water but also on the surface, across the islands. This is the peculiarity of the settlement.
"A potentially dangerous irritant, i.e. the unsettled border issue was removed from Russian-Chinese relations," Vorobyov stressed.
